Day Trading from home software setup - Advice please!

[A Dashing Blade]

Looking to go intra-day trading from home in the new year. Have a system which I’ve been paper trading for a bit (I work on a trading desk) and am now confident that it may, just about, fingers crossed, touch wood, work in practice.

But, I filter/clean my data (eg ignore any Bund trade of less than 25 lots etc) within an excel spreadsheet using the PPPro rueters add-in and the Worksheet_Change event and feed this into my Excel/vba based "system".

So, my home set-up is going to require a data feed (doh!) and some sort of chart package(?) that comes with an API (or at least the ability to get real-time data into a spreadsheet).

Note that I don't need to get the clean data back into the chart package and that DDE links into a spreaddy (a la Bloomberg) is no good for me as you can’t capture a data change event.

Cost isn’t really a problem (am considering CQG if they’ll give me a 3 month free trial).

Reliability and data quality are paramount for me. I’ll initially be trading Eurex products (Bund and Dax)

Any reccomendations?

 

[JonnyT]

www.interactivebrokers.com

Free live data feed and API and DDE straight to Excel if required.

JonnyT

 

[Trader333]

Looking to go intra-day trading from home in the new year. Have a system which I’ve been paper trading for a bit (I work on a trading desk) and am now confident that it may, just about, fingers crossed, touch wood, work in practice.

I would suggest that you prove that your approach works first before throwing yourself into it full time. Why not take some holiday and see if you are able to make sufficient funds ? I say this because your comments sound less than confident.


Paul

 

[A Dashing Blade]

Any other possibilities available apart from IB?

 

[JonnyT]

Yes if you want to spend a few hundred dollars a month.

JonnyT

 

[A Dashing Blade]

Yes if you want to spend a few hundred dollars a month.

JonnyT

That is not a problem, reliability and data quality are important.

 

[Calypso]

Kyte, GNI, Fortis.

 

[nine]

What makes you think that IB is not reliable with high data quality?

Seperately I'd be curious to understand how you define quality vs not quality.

 

[A Dashing Blade]

What makes you think that IB is not reliable with high data quality?

Seperately I'd be curious to understand how you define quality vs not quality.

I want a fast, robust feed that'll only go down when the exchange goes down based around a software platform that doesn't crash, upgrades seamlessly & doesn't conflict with any other 3rd party kit. I'm more than familiar with the professional kit, Bloomie, Reuters GQG etc, I'm on less familiar ground in the private client arena.

 

[JonnyT]

What about your connection?
What about your PC?

I've been with IB over three years and there's only been a few occasions there's been problems. i.e. two or three times a year.

JonnyT

 

[A Dashing Blade]

What about your connection?
What about your PC?

I've been with IB over three years and there's only been a few occasions there's been problems. i.e. two or three times a year.

JonnyT

I'm based in Central London.

2 broadband connections running on seperate phone lines
one 4 meg
one 24meg

2 new bespoke pc's with 2 gig ram, 256meg video cards each having 2 samsung 19" screens, and running XP Pro and Office 2003

 

[JonnyT]

There you go. You are running an insecure and unstable Operating System.

Nothing worse than a blue screen just as you enter a trade.

JonnyT

 

[A Dashing Blade]

Harsh but fair!

Anyway, back on thread, any other alternaitives to IB anyone?

 

[vaxxy]

If it's the 'free' that you don't like, you can send me your money.

"only go down when the exchange goes down"

Well, sorry, but that doesn't exist. Not even in a bank. Working on a trading desk, I'm sure you're accustomed to "my quote is 2 seconds slow going out!" and "prices 3 seconds stale!".

We're talking IT here. IB is up there with the most reliable.

"I'm based in Central London."

Me too. I miss the singing birds and friendly milkman.

Good luck.

 

[cbyp]

so, with IB, they offer free data feeds? how come this is free, its been $70 everytwhere i look.

great if that is the case!

I have some models i wanted to test out on forex but datafeed costs have put me off running up to xmas, but if data feed is free then thats great. can i feed it into an application like wave59 etc.?

thanks

 

[Hittfeld]

so, with IB, they offer free data feeds? how come this is free, its been $70 everytwhere i look.

great if that is the case!

I have some models i wanted to test out on forex but datafeed costs have put me off running up to xmas, but if data feed is free then thats great. can i feed it into an application like wave59 etc.?

thanks

Yes the feed is for free, but there ain`t no historicals (just 5 days).

Hittfeld

 

[swandro]

If you want to retain your Excel/VBA system, you can use MyTrack for your data. They offer a direct-to-Excel feed. See www.trackdata.com. You have to buy the Silver package at least and the Excel option is a small additional cost.

Quality? Dunno how to measure it but I have been using their feed for some time and have been quite happy with it.

 

[Directional]

Dash,
how did you get on with this project? I see that this thread is a few months old - I'm assuming you didnt run with IB since from the sounds of it you require precise and accurate tick data for your system and IB does tick netting on its data feed, aside from the retail commissions.

I'm assuming you know TT X_trader will export to excel via their API and you can also use RTE rather than DDE which is better, I'm told, for getting significant data flows into excel.

 

[Baruch]

Harsh but fair!

Anyway, back on thread, any other alternaitives to IB anyone?

http://www.saxobank.com

 

[stockdaily]

Looking to go intra-day trading from home in the new year. Have a system which I’ve been paper trading for a bit (I work on a trading desk) and am now confident that it may, just about, fingers crossed, touch wood, work in practice.

But, I filter/clean my data (eg ignore any Bund trade of less than 25 lots etc) within an excel spreadsheet using the PPPro rueters add-in and the Worksheet_Change event and feed this into my Excel/vba based "system".

So, my home set-up is going to require a data feed (doh!) and some sort of chart package(?) that comes with an API (or at least the ability to get real-time data into a spreadsheet).

Note that I don't need to get the clean data back into the chart package and that DDE links into a spreaddy (a la Bloomberg) is no good for me as you can’t capture a data change event.

Cost isn’t really a problem (am considering CQG if they’ll give me a 3 month free trial).

Reliability and data quality are paramount for me. I’ll initially be trading Eurex products (Bund and Dax)

Any reccomendations?

There is no reliable trading software out there. Otherwise the guy who makes wrote the software will be billionaire now.